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Title: Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings by Jorge Luis Borges, James E. Irby, Donald A. Yates ISBN: 0-8112-0012-4 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation Pub. Date: February, 1988 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.47 (32 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Labyrinths With No Bottom!
Comment: If you cannot gather from the title, Jorge Luis Borges' Labyrinths, is a collection of short stories and other writings based on labyrinths--you know, mazes. The first story in the collection, "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" is a really interesting tale. In the story, this intellectual finds a copy of the Anglo-American Cyclopedia which includes an entry on a country, Tlon. Wanting to find more information on Tlon, he searches other anthologies and encyclopedias, but can never find any more information on the country. He finds shortly thereafter, however, that a group of scholars, years before, sat down in conferences and created Tlon--a country with idealistic laws, optimal time-keeping systems, and so on--and than amended their fictions to the end of one copy of the Anglo-American Cyclopedia. After finding this and then making this interesting find public, the world, slowly adapts this Tlon, this world created by man, as their own--that is, after a little time, the culture and history of Tlon become the culture and history of Earth. "The Garden of Forking Paths" is another interesting story from the collection. It's about Ts'ui Pen, a man who writes a novel that is regarded as nonsensical garbage because no one can understand it. It is found, however, that the story does have meaning. Instead of explaining the whole idea [you should read the story instead], I will say that the idea is very interesting and worth noting--another labyrinth, of course. This story, this "Garden of Forking Paths" reminds me a lot of Joyce's Finnigan's Wake. I'm sure that Joyce did something similar in that novel as Ts'ui Pen does in his.
Many of the stories in this collection are like these two that I have described [though some better than others], but there is also some nonfiction, academic writings, as well, including one devoted to Franz Kafka. Borges is a gifted wordsmith; he writes in such a way that you feel as if your brain is really working and that you are actually becoming more intelligent. It is nice that absolutely anyone, with whatever experience [even me], can read these stories and get something smart out of them--that is, anybody can enjoy them. I like these stories enough that I will even forgive Borges for his ignorant slandering of the style used by Bob Dylan in the story, "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote"--saying that works that "situate Christ on a boulevard" or "Don Quixote on Wall Street" work "only to produce the plebeian pleasure of anachronism or (what was worse) to enthrall us with the elementary idea that all epochs are the same or are different." It is interesting that, truly, it is Dylan who is the master of the labyrinthine and subterranean, though he never mentions them, and not Borges, who mentions them all the time. Borges' statement is absurdly ironic as he happens to be deriding Dylan [indirectly, of course] for something which he does himself only half as well. Bob Dylan's labyrinths are indeed labyrinths, but they are labyrinths with various determined and meaningful end points [his labyrinths, I know for fact, have more meaning than that mentioned in the quotation above], unlike Borges' labyrinths in which ends would be inconsequential and unnecessary. Thus, Borges' labyrinths, truthfully, ARE [really!] more "plebeian" than are Dylan's. It's true! In spite of this, Labyrinths is still a good compilation of the writings of Borges. My only real qualm with the book is that I wish there could have been a little more diversity in the subject matter and the thoughts being conveyed. Overall, though, it is an interesting book.
Rating: 5
Summary: A brainiac's delight
Comment: Borges is not quite like any other author I've ever read. Some of his influences appear to have been Swift (in his brilliant, mock high-serious parodies of scholarly writings) and E.T.A. Hoffman (in the often arcane subject matter of his stories, and in their sheer weirdness). He shares with his contemporary, Nabokov, great stylistic elegance and a love of intellectual puzzles.
And he's clearly influenced the work of a host of artists, writers, and thinkers: the Foucault of "What Is An Author?," Stanley Fish's reader response theories, the paintings of Remedios Varo, the novels of Auster and Pynchon, even the recent film "Memento," all bear unmistakable traces of his influence. Perhaps the writer Borges most resembles is Kafka - he and Kafka were masters of the short story, managing in a few taut pages to pack a dazzling breadth and depth of ideas, effects, and implications. Most significantly of all, both Borges and Kafka are in many ways sui generis.
So you really must READ Borges (who, shockingly, never won the Nobel Prize) to get a full measure of his originality. His stories are mysterious, elliptical, hauntingly beautiful. The best of them are capable of expanding the boundaries of consciousness by forcing the reader to question the nature of knowledge, of time, of identity, of reality itself. In short, the effect is, as I believe they called it way back in the 60s, a mindf***.
If you've never read Borges before, "Labryrinths" is an excellent place to start, as it includes not only many of his most memorable stories, but some astute pieces of literary criticism ("The Argentine Writer and Tradition"), as well as his short, fable-like "Parables" (of which, for me, the most resonant are "Everything and Nothing" and "Borges and I"). The heart of this collection, though, are stories like "Pierre Menard, Author of the 'Quixote,'" "The Library of Babylon," and "Funes the Memorious." They contain images that will haunt your dreams.
Rating: 4
Summary: The bibliography is a lie!
Comment: The back cover of this book glibly promises "a biographical and critical introduction, as well as an extensive bibliography." The introduction is there, but you will search this volume in vain for the slightest hint of a bibliography, extensive or otherwise. JLB's stories are excellent, but if you're expecting the promised extensive bibliography, prepare to be bitterly disappointed.
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Title: Ficciones (English Translation) by Jorge Luis Borges, Anthony Kerrigan, Anthony Bonner ISBN: 0802130305 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: March, 1989 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges, Andrew Hurley ISBN: 0140286802 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: September, 1999 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges, Erik Desmazieres, Andrew Hurley, Angela Giral ISBN: 156792123X Publisher: David R Godine Pub. Date: August, 2000 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: Everything & Nothing by Jorge Luis Borges, Donald A. Yates, James E. Ieby, John M. Fein, Eliot Winberger, James E. Irby, Jorge Borges, Eliot Weinberger ISBN: 0811214001 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Pub. Date: 01 April, 1999 List Price(USD): $8.50 |
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Title: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino, William Weaver ISBN: 0156439611 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: October, 1982 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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